School Council

Last term the previous year's School Councillors carried out their long planned waste audit in school, including showing all the staff and pupils what they had found, and talking about it in an assembly. They hoped to shock everyone in to taking more care of where their waste went and trying to reuse, and reduce the amount made.

We then held elections for new School Councillors, who were not allowed to have represented their class in the previous year. We have two school councillors from every year group, apart from year R who are represented by the year 1s, and year 6 where we have three councillors as they will also act as chair people, and minute takers.

After a slow start last term we have tried to hold a meeting every two or three weeks, and I am seeing growing confidence and group work as we have the regular, short (20 minutes) meetings. The year 6 councillors are becoming more confident in their leadership, and support roles, and I am starting to be able to step back a little into a more guiding and consulting role.

The classes, when consulted by their councillors, wanted us to look into improving clubs and the toilets, as the main focus.

The council would like to support the work of the lunch time staff by asking children to run some smaller clubs, as they acknowledged in their discussion that the staff provision of clubs is very good for a small school. They hope to get some year 6s organising some clubs such as craft and games clubs.

The council would also like to start a campaign to improve the care and use by the children of the toilets, and we have a planning meeting for that this week, hopefully. Mr Somerwill gave us some information about entering a campaigning competition run be Parliament, and they are hoping to use this campaign to enter this competition.

Mr Somerwill and I would also like to use School Council to support and improve the social/moral/caring behaviour in school, and so if ever they bring up an issue connected to that I try and encourage them to take it further. However they are very focused on toilets at the moment!

Rebecca Bilton

Our school waste audit, October :

Our School Council

Our School Council represents the views of all our pupils. It gives children the opportunity to make their voices heard and feel part of the whole school community.

We are currently seeing how we can improve our playtime and are also carrying out a Green audit.